Abstract [en]

From the early1800s to over 30 years following World War II, a classical industrial economy dominated Europe and the US. In the 1980s, this classical form began to disintegrate, and new opportunities for the development of novel business forms began to appear. Classical thinking persisted in the aftermath of the Second World War in response to the need to rebuild economies ravaged during the struggle. The focus was on industrial and corporate management theories underlying the central role of large, multinational corporations, and it was some 30 years before the academic community began to show renewed interest in entrepreneurship theory. Numerous textbooks discuss the dominant lines of entrepreneurship theory, and many scholars have remarked on the need for a comprehensive theoretical framework of entrepreneurship that includes theoretical variables and the relationship between those variables. Entrepreneurship research has clearly had entrepreneurial processes, issues related to business opportunity concepts and firm creation as its main focus. Researchers appear to have not yet reached a consensus on a definition of entrepreneurship. Two approaches can be used to explore this issue. The first approach considers the historical progression of entrepreneurship theory while the second attempts to categorize the theories into groups based on specific lines of thinking. This entry shortly reviews these key theories and approaches in entrepreneurship with a main focus on the process approach. It also discusses, in line with the on-going debate, sustainability issues related to entrepreneurship. The chapter winds up with a discussion of the Klofsten’s “Business Platform Model” an example of a practical model for investigating and understanding early entrepreneurial development processes in firms and organizations.